On Saturday night, former Utah Jazz point guard Deron Williams was making his boxing debut, scoring a split-decision victory over former NFL running back Frank Gore on the undercard of the Jake Paul-Tyron Woodley pay-per-view.
Around the same time the 37-year-old was showing off his pugilistic skills, the Jazz were flailing a bit without their current point guard, Mike Conley, who was held out for rest on the second night of a back-to-back.
It’s obviously silly to suggest the retired-since-2017 D-Will could have presented any help at all to the Jazz in their 109-103 loss to the Wizards, but it was also pretty obvious the team was sorely lacking in the point guard department Saturday with Conley on the bench.
Utah had just 17 assists on 35 baskets. And committed 16 turnovers. And was pretty isolation-heavy. And didn’t ever really do much to push the pace, accumulating only nine fast-break points. And they suffered a second straight loss.
Asked if the ball movement was good enough, Rudy Gobert had a straightforward response:
“Not really. I think we can do much better,” he said.
Others with the team went into a bit more detail on what went wrong.
“I’d kind of point to quick decisions as much as ball movement. But oftentimes that quick decision could be a quick pass,” noted coach Quin Snyder. “Finding a balance between using ball movement and running to create opportunities vs. attacking and getting in the paint to create, whether it be for yourself or for a kick-out for the rim, collectively, that’s something that we weren’t as in sync as we can be.”
While Snyder added that he felt like the 1-through-5 switching that the Wizards resorted to with Montrezl Harrell in at center wasn’t particularly troublesome for his team, Donovan Mitchell disagreed a bit.
“We just made it tough on ourselves as far as the switching — we got into isolation, we got stagnant a little bit,” said the All-Star guard. “We started to figure it out, keep it moving, but those possessions definitely hurt.”
Both of them lamented the missed opportunities to push the pace.
The coach pointed out that while the Jazz are typically an excellent pick-and-roll team, relying as heavily upon it as they did Saturday robbed the team of much-needed flexibility and creativity. Having Gobert and Hassan Whiteside and Rudy Gay running the floor with purpose has the effect of drawing defenders to them and creating space for others.
That didn’t happen often enough against the Wiz — something Mitchell was peeved about in the aftermath of the Jazz’s second straight defeat.
“We didn’t really push the ball in transition a lot. We didn’t run as much as we could have,” he said. “… For us, it’s continuing to push the pace, get the ball moving, and find the open man.”
Joe Ingles, who got the start with Conley out, but who totaled only two dimes himself, pointed out that it’s pretty noticeable when the Jazz are playing the way they want to vs. when they aren’t.
“Obviously, everybody knows when we move the ball the way we do and we get downhill and make plays for each other, we’re pretty elite in those situations,” he said.
And while the Jazz’s porous perimeter defense garnered most of the attention Saturday, there was pretty obviously not much elite about their offense, either.
“Tonight, we missed Mike’s presence, obviously,” Mitchell said simply.
Gobert, who has developed such amazing two-man-game chemistry with Conley over the past couple seasons, got only four shots off against the Wizards without his typical point guard partner. He was visibly frustrated about it at times, though he did refrain from mentioning it postgame.
Still, he challenged the team to close the considerable gap between how they play with Conley out there vs. how they perform without him.
“Mike does everything for all the other guys on the court. He tries to make other guys better all the time. So obviously, it’s always a little harder for everybody when he’s not out there,” said Gobert. “But it’s also great, because as we’ve seen, like last year in the playoffs, he might not always be there, and it has to be who we are as a team. So, once again, Mike Conley’s a great player, he’s a very unselfish player, so when he’s not there, we’ve got to all channel that even more as a team. It’s always a good opportunity when he’s not there for us to try to take that step and get better as a team.”
